I just came back from an overseas trip this morning and the first thing I did was to check on the Copper Flash pupa and The Baron caterpillar.In the Copper Flash breeding cage, I saw a butterfly drying its wings so it must have just emerged today. Yahoo!
I could see the cell-end bars on the underside of both wings and a spot in the middle of the forewing cell. There is no doubt that this is indeed a Rapala pheretima.
The Baron caterpillar has grown quite a bit. It is 55mm long and it had finished all the mango leaves in the breeding cage. I was out of mango leaves so I went out to get more leaves. When I came back and was about to put the new leaves in the breeding cage, I saw a tiny green thing wriggling on the a leaf. I couldn't believe my eyes. Not another Baron caterpillar!
It is rather small, only 2.5mm long, probably at the 2nd instar. It looks totally different from the later instar caterpillar. From the closeup photos above , you can see the early instar caterpillar has short simple spines while the later instar caterpillar has long branching spines.
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